Jets When Britain Ruled The Skies….Question

Nene/Derwent to Uncle Joe

J A Engel, Cold War at 30,000ft.,Harvard UP,2007 explores reciprocal dirty tricks. P.60: Early-Spring,’46 “Curtiss-Wright began negotiations with (KMT China and USSR for) sale of (piston) engines”. They couldn’t try to sell turbines as they then had none. UK did and was broke. UJ was a valiant Ally. UK was trying to demob and advance into the broad sunlit uplands after the War to end all Wars. We did not embark on intercontinental atomic bombers, their transonic defenders, nor fettle away on improving V2. If my name was Chomsky I would explain to you who started the Cold War.

Derwent and Nene came off the secret list early-1946 because we had no enemy. We promptly sold some to proto-fascist Argentina, traded for meat, cos UK wanted to eat. 10 Derwents and 30 Nenes (later more of each) were sold October,1946 to our Uncle, onway, we hoped, to wider trade to channel $-sparse timber and wheat to UK and happy co-existence to USSR. UJ had vacated Bornholm, W.Austria and Vienna without fuss, N.Iran after fuss. Enemy he was not…for UK until 14/4/48 when Cabinet gave Chiefs the Task of slowing him on the N.German Plain. Swift, Hunter, Canberra, V-craft all followed.

It is ahistorical now to criticise naive pols for waiting till 4/48 to re-arm. Their duty was to try hard to co-exist with the Ally who had done most of the dying.

“RAF” did not want Avon in 1946 because it did not work. It was funded into Valiant, 4/48 because the better design teams had already been loaded with Sapphire and Olympus for the definitive Mediums, to be Victor/Vulcan. It did take too long to bring Hunter to the start line, Swift never. RAF/UK and RAFG were equipped with 438 Sabres, airframes paid for by Canada, engines by US. A USAFE Wing of F-86D was stationed Manston, 11/53-5/58; a Wing of RCAF F-86E at N.Luffenham, 11/51-3/55.

Of everything I have heard over that episode, Orion (#33), I’ve not heard of the RAF’s involvement.

Thank you for adding a little more to my meagre knowledge. :eagerness:

The pegasus was based on a French idea!
And how was the Jaguar better than the Phantom? (I know it was designed as an interceptor, but could still carry more AGW (and faster!) than the Jaguar!

Hard to disagree David, but Service Chiefs are often little more than politicians in uniform…

There are some worthy exceptions to that of course.

And the Jaguar as well.

But the shortsightedness of policiticians on defence is nothing new. After the Treaty of Amiens in 1801, the RN was cut back and then there was a desperate scramble to get it all back on line when it became apparent the Napoleonic threat hadn’t gone away after all.

The post-war Clement Attlee governent

It was just plain stupidity and naïveté. I believe one of the conditions of the transfer was that the Soviets don’t use the engine for military means. The Soviets copied it as best they could of course as the Klimov RD-45 and then the VK-1 and used it the power the Mig 15, Mig 17 and Il-28 Beagle. Then they passed the design to the Chinese who made the WP-5 derivative.

With respect it wasn’t just the politicians who were naive. The RAF advised the government that the Nene wasn’t good enough for the next generation jet fighter. When the gov. took them at their word and offered it around the world including the USSR the RAF panicked, but by then it was too late. The RAF was playing a political game too, it wanted the Avon (which the USAF thought was a dreadful engine) and not the Sapphire (which the USAF thought was brilliant) to power its next fighter. In between it was content to operate the Meteor and Vampire which were obsolete by 1948. The situation got completely out of hand to the extent that the only effective type offering air defence of GB in 1953 was a wing of RCAF Sabres operating out of Manston.

It’s all very well blaming politicians but the RAF has to share the blame too. It was a massive strategic error.

Regards

Still going on, Nimrod MRA4, refurbishment of MR2

And the Harrier

😀

Originally designed by Si Si Si korski 😀

Is he not that famous Chelsea centre half?

If you want to play that game….:)

My point was simply the UK had a lot of great talent and produced some good airframes and was the unquestioned leader in the 20s….but when politicians get ahold of things, things go wrong.

Still going on, Nimrod MRA4, refurbishment of MR2

You forgot the Sea King, an aeroplane I spent many, many hours in and has to be considered one of the finest helicopter designs ever.

😀

Originally designed by Si Si Si korski 😀

Re 11

What are you on ?

Add the following:

Hawk

If you want to play that game….:)

You forgot the Sea King, an aeroplane I spent many, many hours in and has to be considered one of the finest helicopter designs ever.

Baz

Whilst visting American aircraft manufacturers I was always struck by the number of British accents (in senior roles) I came across in the design offices.

And remember, most of the wartime types you got for free. )

Not so …in fact the UK paid for a large amount of the equipment received one way or another (Reverse lend-lease accounted for several billion £, discounted end-of war sales also).

Regarding the who’s got the best……

The USA had to resort to dirty tricks to try to stop or delay the start of Concorde services…initially to give Boeing the chance to catchup with it’s non-starter B2707…then merely as sour-grapes when it became obvious the Boeing aircraft would never fly.Such things as requiring all supersonic civil craft to be US registered and restrictive landing and take-off regulations.

The post-war Clement Attlee governent

It was just plain stupidity and naïveté. I believe one of the conditions of the transfer was that the Soviets don’t use the engine for military means. The Soviets copied it as best they could of course as the Klimov RD-45 and then the VK-1 and used it the power the Mig 15, Mig 17 and Il-28 Beagle. Then they passed the design to the Chinese who made the WP-5 derivative.

Indeed – so much innovation scuppered by inept and shortsighted politicians. Mmm – didn’t Churchill give the Nene to “Uncle Joe”?:(

As much as I admire the British engineers that made and designed our brilliant aircraft, I’ve got to say JBoyle has a point about our useless politicians.

edit, to which I’d add some of our equally shortsighted industry leaders. BEA scuppering the prospects of the Trident, BOAC likewise the VC10 etc

Don’t forget the mighty TSR2 that was streaks ahead of any US or any other nation’s aircraft at the time and shelved partly due to a dodgy ‘bribe’ to buy the F111 instead but, that didn’t materialise either!

:eagerness:

GYD

Re 11

What are you on ?

Add the following:

The best bits of the Mustang inc. the name.
The first jet liner
The Canberra – you bought it
The Mosquito – you wanted to buy it
The Harrier – you bought it
The Spitfire – you bought it – reverse Lease Lend
The Lanc. – you should have bought it. It was streets in front of the B.17
British supersonic? We needed only one and you still haven’t been able to match its performance !

Here’s a few other items that helped you along the way:

Cavity magnetron
Angled flight deck
Steam catapults
Ultra
Atomic knowhow – so you could build not only the bomb but your first nuclear reactor – after the British !
Ship convoys – it took two years to convince that dolt Admiral King

That’ll do to be going on.

Silly story re this film. When it came out I was at Kabrit in Egypt, this film was only on the camp cinema for one night!
This just happened to be a night flying night, 219 Sqdn CO was an uptight so-and-so and insisted on his crews flying. Our CO had more sense and scrubbed our night flying so we could all watch. As we were flying Meteor NF13s at the time there was no way we would ever trouble this “barrier”.
At the time we were using the open air cinema and one of the 219 pilots did a nice barrel roll at low level over the cinema where the Stationmaster was also attending. Nobody let on who the culprit was so he escaped.

Lovely story Peter 🙂

Was West Germany’s change of heart due to all that illicit Lockheed money? :rolleyes:
Its very hard to say what was an honest choice and what wasn’t due to all that bribery. :dev2: